Category: Wedding

I’m getting married next year and whilst I’m mostly looking forward to the whole thing, the one aspect that I wasn’t looking forward to was dress shopping for three main reasons

I don’t really wear dresses

I’ve never looked at a traditional wedding dress and said “wow”

I’m not overly happy with my body at the moment.

The first two were fairly easy to deal with. It’s just something that I need to accept. My fiance has already asked me to wear a dress so I’m going to respect that. But I don’t really like wedding dresses. So many of them are just not me – too much poof, too much lace, too much material, too much bling.

So I went dress shopping for the first time on Saturday and I have to say it was an experience.

There were so many dresses. And such little differences that it was really overwhelming. But the hardest thing wasn’t picking the dresses, it was trying them on. Which brings me to point number 3.

Wow – you do not want to already be feeling shit about your body when you try wedding dresses on.

As luck would have it I was feeling shit about myself. I’ve put on weight, I haven’t been eating well or exercising regularly and to top it all off my period decided to pay me a visit so I was nauseous and bloated to start with.

The sizing of each dress didn’t help either. So many of the arm/shoulder sections were far too tight. I tried on a 14 that wouldn’t zip up, an 8 that fit me perfectly, a 10 that was fine in the bust but not in the waist and a 12 that was fine in the waist and butt but not the bust. I’m also not a visually imaginative person – I find it really hard to picture things when they’re too long, too short, too tight, too loose. I need to be able to see it exactly how it should fit on me to make a decision.

I only went to two stores but by the second I was really over it and really confused. The styles of dresses that I seemed to like did not look good on me and the dresses that I didn’t like looked great on me. Also, despite ivory and champagne not looking terrible on me, I don’t still like the colours. I’m a black/grey/navy girl and most bridal stores don’t carry dark colours which is a real shame. Even one dark colour would be better than nothing.

Whilst I’m not looking forward to another go, I’m booking another appointment for end of July. One of the stores I went to will have a new range in within the next two weeks and I want to try out another designer that seems to have a lot of dresses that seemingly will suit me (fingers crossed). Hopefully this time I won’t be bloated and nauseous and I’ll have my fitness and nutrition back on track.